How much?!

I - no, we - are planning to redecorate now the house has been de-cluttered and moved around a bit. The first and most urgent room is the lounge.

Being someone that likes soft warmth under their bare-most-of-the-time feet I never did buy into the sanded floorboard/laminated throughout trend that swept the nation over the last decade or so. Thus the carpet, that matches both the seating and the heavy curtains, pretty much dictates the colourways used around it.

The carpet is a deep shade of blue, lifted by a steady, regular pattern of dark yellow flecks. The sofa and armchairs are a similarly deep blue chenille, albeit fleck free. The curtains, navy velvet. It's all quite lush and tactile and somewhat spoiled by the pale orange walls showing their age so I set about looking for new wallpaper.

The first flat I bought - with my then husband - was an internal conversion in an externally listed building and had gorgeous if inconvenient twelve foot high ceilings. Dado rails were all the rage and large expanses of plain colour were my preference so I worked out an artistically correct height ratio, painted contrasting colours above and below it and pasted a toning roll of border between them.

My next dwelling, the first I'd ever had as a lone adult, I brightened and freshened all through for the princely sum of £12. A friend that knew I was finding my feet as a single parent alerted me to a charity shop that had been gifted a load of end-of-line paint so I nipped in and chose a pot to cover the shitty wallpaper in every room. Oh how I loved my little pick 'n' mix house. A super bright yellow entrance hall led left to a terracotta lounge, a lilac mistress bedroom (complete with home sewn curtains to match) straight ahead and the two children's rooms, one bubblegum pink and one sky blue, to the right.

When I told my landlord I needed to move out of the east end of London and he offered me this place he insisted he had to be there when I saw the decor. Having seen it, I understood why he wanted to view the spectacle when my jaw dropped. It really was very, very bad, the kind of 60s/70s bad stuff now seen on trendy feature walls in Shoreditch, except this was a darker brown. And absolutely all over the place.

Wanting to retain some texture, I nevertheless had the whole lot painted over before I moved in, lifting every wall to a brighter tone that went with the carpet and combined to create a natural path through the space. My lovely landlord let me loose with colour charts and paid my favourite firefighter friends to do the work, I simply project-managed. That, however, was five years ago and changes are required.

So, having been spoilt by both charity and charmers, I find myself utterly slack-gobbed when I look online for wallpaper to spruce the place up and can't find anything even half nice for less than £10 a roll. And even that's a cast-off listed on bloody eBay!

What the fuck? Pass the dulux one-coat, will ya?